BC Quietly Kills an Office That Ensured Merit-Based Hiring

Deep in Tuesday’s budget documents, the B.C. government quietly scrapped the independent office of the legislature responsible for making sure public service hirings are based on merit.

The office of the merit commissioner is no longer needed because the Public Service Agency in the Finance Ministry has evolved to fill the same function, said Finance Minister Brenda Bailey.

“Since this office came into play, the concept of merit has really been culturally adopted throughout the PSA and as part of our efficiency review we’re moving that work fully into the [agency],” Bailey said.

The B.C. government created the office of the merit commissioner in 2001. Its role is to “make sure appointments to and within the BC Public Service are fair and based on merit,” which it does by auditing appointments as well as reviewing staffing decisions at the request of applicants who weren’t hired.

Bailey said closing the office will save $2.2 million a year. According to budget documents, annual funding for the office was about $1.7 million. The three-year term of the current commissioner, David McCoy, is set to end on March 10. He is paid less than $80,000 a year for part-time work.

“We’re in a time when every dollar matters and you’re going to see us reviewing everything,” said Bailey.

“I think what’s important to understand is last year the merit commissioner did a review of 276 cases and found zero examples of political patronage, so I think we can say confidently that this work has been incorporated into the behaviour of the PSA and that the merit office has completed its work.”

But those numbers don’t reflect what’s in the merit commissioner’s report for 2024-2025, the most recent that’s publicly available.

For that report the office randomly selected for audit 272 of the previous year’s 11,467 hirings. “This year’s results show an increase in Merit Not Applied findings over previous year’s results, from 6 [per cent] to 10 [per cent],” it said. “This is the highest rate since 2016/17.”

That means about 1,114 of that year’s hirings were made without merit being applied, the report said. In another 31 per cent of cases, or about 3,370, the office found there were errors made in the hiring process but they had no identifiable negative impact on the outcome.

Only about six out of 10 hirings were found to be fully based on merit through a process that was both properly designed and applied.

The interim leader of the Conservative Party of BC, Trevor Halford, said the government’s decision to close the office of the merit commissioner is “incredibly disappointing” but not surprising.

“The fact is this is a premier that’s hid from accountability,” he said.

It’s a big deal to eliminate an independent office from the legislature and it’s telling that the government hid the decision in the budget, said Halford.

“Clearly it’s not something they want to talk about,” he said. “This is an independent officer they’re trying to silence. I think it’s very concerning to the public, but again this is part of the premier’s MO.”

At a time of record deficits following years with large numbers of people hired to the public service, he added, the government needs more transparency and more scrutiny, not less.

The BC General Employees’ Union, whose 95,000 members include 35,000 in the public service, released a statement opposing the change and saying it wasn’t consulted. Shifting oversight to the PSA creates a clear and unavoidable conflict of interest, it said.

“You cannot effectively oversee yourself,” said BCGEU president Paul Finch. “Independent review exists for a reason: to ensure accountability, maintain public confidence, and protect from political or internal interference. Eliminating independent oversight undermines transparency and risks eroding trust in the fairness of public service staffing.”

Employees in the public service deserve to have confidence that staffing decisions are fair and impartial, he said, while British Columbians deserve assurance the public service is professional and non-partisan.

“Removing independent oversight sends the wrong message,” he said.